Have you blanked for as long as this?

Leon Bartropp

“A few years ago I was fortunate enough to get a ticket for a small private syndicate that holds some truly stunning fish to upper forties. The lake is five-acres in size, climbing trees all around it so you can see where to place your baits and you have the use of a boat so you can go out and bait up etc. I had been told that it was mega hard, but after walking round the lake and seeing the fish feeding in the edge and generally showing themselves off, I decided that the lake couldn’t be that hard and there and then I decided that I was going to ‘have it off’ and catch everything in there in the first season. How wrong I was! After some 40 nights of trying different rigs, baits and tactics and generally pulling my hair out, I finally managed my first fish. I had really worked hard for that fish and I’ll never think a lake is there for the taking again, I can tell you!”

Ed Betteridge

“I have had many long blanks in my time as a carp angler, it comes with the territory of big fish angling because a lot of the waters I fish are very low stocked. I did a year and a bit on a very large Cambs pit and caught two carp in 66 nights. Now that may sound like hard going, but it was considered a good result on there!

“The occasion that stands out in my mind happened over 20 years ago when I was just starting out as a carp angler. I think it was 1990 or ‘91 and I had been carp fishing for a couple of years. I had been doing quite well on a local days only water the previous season, banking around 35 carp at weekends and school holidays, but the year in question I was really struggling. Between June 16th and the middle of August I had only banked four fish off the deck (luckily I had a few off the surface). I racked my brains as to what I was doing wrong. I stopped holding the boilie stops in my mouth, I rubbed my hands in silt before I touched my terminal tackle, I made sure I followed my old bait recipes to the letter, but nothing helped! Until I looked at the way I tied my hooks on. “Coming from a match fishing background, I knew I used to get better hook holds with spade-end hooks as opposed to eyed, so when I started carping I used the spade-end knot to tie the boilie hooks on. But a local angler (that was considered good) ridiculed the knot and insisted I was better using a 10-Turn Blood Knot and like a young impressionable 14-year-old I believed him! This was the cause of my poor form, as soon as I switched back to the spade-end knot my catch-rate soared!

“This was before the Knotless Knot was known about and the spade-end knot created the same effect, and we all know how effective the Knotless Knot is now. Lesson learnt!”

Martin Skoyles

“Compared to some of the really low stock venues, I tend to target lakes with a reasonable head of fish in them and so generally despite the odd blank trip along the way it’s not that long until the buzzer is sounding again. However, I hit my longest run of blanks on an Oxfordshire syndicate water last year that really left me scratching my head for a while.

“The venue was really weedy this particular summer and was pretty much to the surface in almost every swim. Despite that, I found a couple of clearer areas and was confident that regularly baiting the spots would keep the weed down and see a few fish coming my way. A lost fish to a hook pull on my first night was frustrating, but at the time I thought it at least meant I had my tactics right. A further nine trips down the line without a single bleep and losing that fish suddenly seemed like a disaster.

“The run of blanks was finally ended in bizarre fashion, with a mid-twenty picking up a single high-attract pop-up seconds after I’d cast it out. Looking back I thought the fish would move from the heavier weed into the area I was baiting. They simply stayed put for most of the summer and made the most of the natural food in the weed. In hindsight I should have realised much earlier and changed tactics or at least tried something different on one rod.”

Alexei Bygrave

“I don’t remember the precise number of nights but my longest blank period was shortly after joining a new syndicate venue in 2011. My season started off well and I caught a carp on my third night of my very first session. As it turned out, that was my last fish of the season and I fished a further 25 or so nights without success. The blank period ended on my first session of the 2012 season, when I caught two double-figure commons and a new personal best mirror weighing 49lb 2oz!

“Looking back, I think I know where I was going wrong during that first season. The lake is split up into loads of little bays and channels, so you almost always end up fishing right in the margins. I think I ruined several good chances by setting up too close to feeding fish or by making too much disturbance. This season I have been ever so careful to set-up as quietly as possible, sitting back from the water’s edge, resisting the temptation to constantly check the spots. The majority of the carp I have caught this season have been on rigs I have lowered into the margins, with no disturbance at all. I have also been spending more time visiting the lake to pre-bait and look for where the carp are happy to feed. The extra effort walking, watching and baiting has certainly helped!”

Mark Bartlett

“Now 48hrs is by far not a long session in anyway shape or form but trust me, when you are on a trial, competing to get into the England Carp Team it seems like a lifetime! There were eight of the country’s hot-shot pairs fishing it out on Brasenose 1 and myself and team mate, Kev Hewitt, who have both fished that complex since we were both shorter than the grass up there, were in the mix. We had been up and practised and sussed the place out for the forthcoming trial; battle plans were made accordingly and we were sorted. So the day is upon us when we are meant to shine and what happens… We blanked! What a nightmare, I couldn’t believe it, after all of the fishing I have done up there and to make matters worse, all the others caught. I just look at it now and laugh it off, as at the end of the day I was out fishing.”

Nigel Sharp

'Some campaigns have taken longer than others... the longest finally resulted with my two targets in two morning's fishing'

“Not being one for doing my own head in by counting how many nights I’ve done on a water between catches or before I’ve caught one, I can’t really say. The only way I can put this into layman’s terms is to say that even when I’m on a water with or without my rods, it’s all part of the bigger picture and adds up to hours that are all part of the chase. So if I had to layout a time span, it would be my time I spent on the Pads Lake at Yateley.

“At the time when I fished it, there was only four carp in the four-acre lake and for years before my time they’d previously been hunted by some of the best anglers in the country so it was never going to be easy to catch those very cagey carp. To get that end result, which was a fish named Jumbo, it took me five months from the start to the finish of that campaign and I never had a bite until the last two mornings. Yes, the second of those two bites was Jumbo at 38lb-plus so it was worth it in the end but a lot of hard work went into getting them"